Grade 7/8 school Blog

This week are talking about themes, themes means what is the overall book based on, what the author concentrating on. In some books that are many themes that are happening, some books may only have a couple. There are thousands and thousands of themes that could be in a book. But some books only have a few out of the thousands. Finding a theme in a book may be hard to find some main ones and why they are a main theme. Some questions for finding a theme would be, what was the story based on? What where things that where happening that would combine as one?. Things like that, than to get deep and know you theme in your book better you have think about were does it show this theme in the book? Than sometimes you also have to think about were that theme wouldn’t go in your book for because one theme isn’t going to be going on all through the book, there are many themes everywhere in the book and not all happening at once.

There isn’t very many themes in my book. But I think the one of the main themes would be friendship. I think it would be friendship because there were a whole bunch of friends together that wanted to go to a sèance together. They all had to stick together because there were 2 people murdered and went missing unsuspectingly. For finding out who did it they tried to find out by asking all of Sara’s friends because they would either know something from what they told her or a friend that didn’t like her that could have killed her. But after when Sara died they didn’t show friendship because they didn’t want to talk to each other about what had happened and then if someone wanted to talk about Sara no one that was at the sèance would want to listen to it.

Another big theme would death because there are two people who got murdered in a pond at the Thicket area. Than all of the friends went and talked to the dead which lead to more death that happened after that. The book is mostly about trying to find out who killed Sara and Roberta. The whole part of the book would be death, with people trying to deal with 2 deaths that happened when talking to the death.

Themes are very important in a book because they show the readers the whole point of the book. Sometimes just reading a bit through the book can make you think what one theme is but some themes for a book can show a bit a the beginning but you don’t notice it until the end of the book were it will really show it. Themes are spread out everywhere. Some themes can be spread out everywhere in a book and some are really and strongly shown in just one spot.

The author’s craft is another one of those things that if it isn’t well written it isn’t a good book. In my book it is really well written. The meaning for author’s craft is choices an author/poet makes when writing a text (eg, organizational pattern, style, vocabulary, images, symbols, point of view, and audience).

For me good writing is a strong description so that when you are reading the book you can feel like you are the character or you are there in the story. In my book I feel that way because they give good and strong descriptions about what they are feeling or what they are seeing. Here is a good paragraph that shows how I think a good style of writing is “But at the graveyard, which is on a little rise of a hill west of town, I looked around at the ring of mourners and felt even worse. Under the heat of the afternoon sun, which beat against the leaves of the ancient dusty oaks, each of us from the séance stood alone. Like so many pillars of salt, we had tried to look back and failed. And in the eyes of the others who shared the pale, flat sky with us, there was sometimes suspicion, sometimes a little fear.”-Joan Lowery Nixon. It takes a lot of thinking and a lot of time to try and get a good and well written novel, writers have to wait a long time for their novel to get publish because lots of things they first write is bad so they have to do it over again and do it better.

A bad writing style is saying this happened and then this happened, on and on again. Not really telling you what is really around them and what is really happening. Some books are written from both sides of the story and when they have more than one side of a story the descriptions are normally showed better so that you can understand different sides of the story good enough. Also I think it is bad writing and confessing for a reader when one paragraph is talking about one time than the next paragraph is talking about another time. In my book there are a few places where it does do that I think authors should put a full line with nothing there or put a star or something to show that they are in a different scene. Here is one from my book were they change the scene:

““Then what in the world happened to Roberta?”

Two days later Aunt Mel’s question was answered when a botanist from the university drove in from the Thicket at a speed high enough to raise the dust cloud that wouldn’t settle for an hour.”-Joan Lowery Nixon

A writer needs to have good writing skills for people to read their book. But authors can do anything they want to do because there is no rules in writing books they can use any word to make a good story. Ever since people were small and in school you learn how to write that is how writers get there techniques is from in school.

Characters in a book is something that is in every book, they have to be described good for the reader to understand the people. In a book there is normally a main character and then a few other characters too. Not all characters have to be liked though, authors normally put a character that no one will like because the character is always doing bad things so the good person. That is were characters and conflicts come in together. Characters always have a fight whether it is a physically or verbally fight. There are many types of conflicts, there is people vs. people, people vs. nature, people vs. society, and people vs. themselves. In a book there are more than one conflict that happens, usually the conflicts get bigger the more time you get into the book.

In my book so far things have slowed down a bit compared to at the beginning of the book. The few chapters that I read this time was mostly about trying to find out who took Sara and trying to organize everything about her and get all the stories straight. A guy was down at the Thicket and found Sara’s body in a pond. The guy brought her back and took her to Sheriff Novell. The stories people think why this may have had happen was she left the house some how and then she went to go meet someone at the Thicket, but the person that she was meeting up with murdered her and left her in the pond. They are having a funeral for her and her mom came in for it.

In my book there is only an internal conflict because Lauren which is Sara’s step sister is having a hard time getting used of the point that her step sister just disappeared. There is no one really yet that she is fighting with other than her self. There is always things going through her head, lot of questions that can’t be answered yet or they will never find the answer to. Authors try and make the conflicts grow and change because they like it to start off slow and get better and better the more you get in to the book.

In my book my character has really changed from the beginning, she really didn’t like Sara because Sara was really cool at school and Lauren wasn’t, Lauren was always scared and worried of a lot. Now in the book she really cares about Sara because she is gone forever and she will never come back and Lauren feels like it is was all her fault that this happened because she was at the Sèance with her. Now Lauren always worries her self and isn’t that scared of everything because she has been through a lot of bad things since this had happened. But now she isn’t really self confident as much like she used to be.

In my book there really isn’t many people that seem to be the bad guy the only guy I don’t like is the sheriff because he isn’t all that scared of what had happened to a teenager. They put characters in a book that people won’t like so that the conflict will seem more interesting and you will get more into the good character.

Now that I am more into the middle of the book the author has slowed down on discribing how they look, the authors do that because now the readers have there first imprestion on them.

The Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the huge issues with water and animals. The Pacific garbage patch is a big huge spot in the ocean that all the currents meet. All the garbage collected their and stays there in the Pacific Ocean. Some people say it is bigger than the state of Texas in the United States. The Pacific garbage patch is located in between North America and Asia. The patch is pretty much full of just plastic and plastic does not disintegrate away so it just goes into really small chunks after time. The problem with the little plastic pieces is that the fish and birds are eating because they think it is food for them. Not that the plastic will hurt them when they eat it but when they do eat they are full of eating but there is no nutrient in it so they die from not eating real food. They think that it is a fish or something so they eat it.

I think that it is really gross they have this and it is really scary that it has grown over half in five years. That just shows that every year the world is using more garbage and are more care less.

Do you think this is fair? How can we prevent this from getting bigger?

Clean water is water with no chemicals or dirt in it, all it is, is pure water. Clean water is a short of supply in the world; there are many houses and countries that do not have access to clean water. It is also impossible for a human eye to see if it is clean water or not. Many people that when water is clear it is clean because they is no dirt in it but clear water can have chemicals in it that are clear and very small. There could be the clearest water in the world but really it could be one of the dirtiest and very unhealthy water.

Access for clean water is really hard for some people around the world but then there are others who have clean water all the time. 70% of the world is covered by water, from ocean, precipitation, ground water and surface water. But the problem is to get clean water from those surfaces are a lot of money, around $200 billion it takes to keep clean water running. I think it isn’t fair when there is enough clean water for everyone but some people have more than they need and others have either no clean water at all or very little of water. In really poor countries people have to work to get water they can’t just turn on their tap and get water. Like in Africa only forty-six percent of people have safe drinking water and 7% of clean water is in Canada. There is a shortage of clean water around the world for some people and it is a big issue that some people don’t consider.